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Welcome back folks! It’s the last full week of June and Summer is here. Last full week of June means one last week of Pride month. Many states are setting up their own pride parade, with rainbow flags flying higher than ever.

But it isn’t just the people themselves celebrating LGBTQ pride; many companies are pulling out their PR and marketing stunts as well. Businesses are conducting tactics like changing their brand logo with a rainbow-colored background or giving public speeches acknowledging this special time of the year. Whatever the case may be, it’s a perfect way to capture the oh-so colorful audiences of the LBGTQ community.

Some companies are going above the call of duty by adding endorsements into their strategy. SKYY vodka recently just did that with the very special queen Trixie Mattel.

That’s right, RuPaul fans – Trixie Mattel is appearing in SKYY’s latest campaign. This campaign is known as ‘Proudly American’, featuring diverse Americans from all walks of life. The video itself features Brian Firkus transforming into the great Trixie Mattel. Trixie Mattel joins LGBTQ members Dusty Ray Bottoms and Gus Kenworthy while sharing the iconic phrase ‘Home of the Brave’ during the ad.

This isn’t Trixie’s first stint with television. RuPaul fans may remember Trixie Mattel from season seven of RuPaul’s Drag Race and winning the third season of RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars. She created the YouTube UNHhhh with Katya, which later became The Trixie & Katya Show on Viceland.

It’s the perfect PR strategy – feature a famous drag performer (Trixie Mattel) and mix her in with in with a famous vodka beverage like SKYY (which so HAPPENS to be brewed in San Francisco!). Trixie Mattel was the perfect endorsement for SKYY vodka. It was a great montage mixed in with her personal message to the audiences.

What you get in the end is an effective ad campaign celebrating Pride month. Pride month has been the key phrase these past few weeks, so it’s best to take advantage of the opportunity as much as you can.

SKYY vodka is an amazing example of a business producing a great ad campaign that reaches out to the LGBTQ community. Its played in a personal, yet humorous way. People like Trixie Mattel and Gus Kenworthy will truly give SKYY vodka that competitive edge.

If there is anything we can reiterate in the end, it’s this – the key word is PRIDE MONTH.

Some companies may modify their brands in order to keep up with the current times while other create a nation-wide campaign. Creating a campaign for your brand helps to bring it more to life. That campaign will do wonders for the story you are trying to present to your audience. People always love a good story to hear, so its important to write up a great one to tell.

Earlier this week, IHOP unveiled their PR stunt with International House of Burgers. This PR stunt presented a new story for the IHOP brand with some tasty burgers on the menu. Meanwhile, Dominoes initiated an interesting campaign for their brand. Domino’s newest brand campaign involves the work of…filling potholes?

That’s right folks – Domino’s Pizza is paving potholes all across the country. It’s all under Domino’s newest ‘Paving for Pizza’ campaign that initiated on Monday. The campaign allows customers to nominate their town for pothole repairs.

Customers can nominate their town by entering pavingforpizza.com and entering their ZIP code. If your town gets picked, then you will be notified about your city receiving extra funding to fix the potholes. While you won’t see the Domino’s branded trucks coming by to do the work, your town will get some much needed essential resources. So far four towns were provided with the funding which include Bartonville, Texas, Milford, Delaware, Athens, Georgia, and Burbank, California.

The gist of Domino’s PR campaign is so that pizzas can safely make it from their locations to their destinations. As simple as this idea seems, it also makes for a great strategy to advertise their carryout service. By scoping in on one downfall about delivery service (with this case, it’s the potholes!), Domino’s seized this opportunity to highlight the option of carrying it out with you. So not only did Domino’s create a brilliant campaign, but they also showcased their carryout option during the process.

This says a lot about American businesses when a pizza company is offering road repairs for certain towns. It’s a bizarre look into how our society is run. Politicians usually deal with things like fixing up potholes, yet a popular pizza chain like Domino’s is easily providing the funding necessary to do just that. Who knew that a pizza chain would be fixing up potholes all across this nation.

Nevertheless, Domino’s brilliant PR campaign already has a huge following on the internet. Many customers are taking to the site to have their roads paved, all in the name of pizza. Your pizza will be saved, but your roads will be improved as well.

This is the kind of campaign we need here in America. Businesses like Domino’s are solving some the country’s major annoyances, one day at a time. They may not be catastrophic problems, but they still need to be fixed in the long run.

Brands are being modified every year with unique changes. Sometimes they merge with other companies or other times they alter their name to introduce something eye-catching for their audience. Companies must adapt to the ever-changing landscape every year if they want to stay ahead of their competition. In some cases, these changes revolutionize the brand in an entirely new way; but in other cases, the change falls flat and ends up becoming a PR nightmare for months to come.

One prime example that happened recently involves the famous breakfast chain restaurant IHOP (International House of Pancakes). IHOP underwent a major brand change in the past week, changing their iconic brand name to IHOB. What’s the new name change, you might ask? International House of Pancakes is being flipped to become… International House of Burgers.

IHOP is temporarily changing its brand name to International House of Burgers. A tweet was released yesterday to reveal the answer to the question that was on every fan’s mind. Many fans speculated that the ‘b’ would stand for ‘bacon’ or ‘breakfast’. One user joked about how it should stand for ‘International House of Brunch’ so that they would start serving mimosas.

The idea was a PR stunt to showcase the line of burgers being released for the menu. Specifically, the IHOB campaign is for the ‘ultimate steak burger’ product. Not only that, but a burger-themed IHOP will be opening in Los Angeles this year. While a new IHOB restaurant will be opening, this PR tactic won’t be applied to all 1,700 IHOP locations.

A major reason for this plan was to capture customers for the day and early evening. Almost half of the customers enter IHOP during breakfast time than any other time. There is a typical lunch/dinner menu for IHOP, but most customers come in for breakfast.

As intriguing as some of the fan’s guesses were, International House of Burgers seemed like a great name idea for the PR tactic. IHOP was always known for their various pancakes and now they are promoting more burgers on their menu. The company has been in business for 60 years and it was about time they start shaking things up with a funny name change.

This right here is a prime example of a company shaking up their brand in an interesting and entertaining way. IHOP took to social media to create this ‘IHOB’ campaign where users had to guess what the ‘b’ would stand for. Many users didn’t get the right answer, but they were still impressed with the new roll out happening in the future. It was an entertaining PR tactic and we even learned about a few releases coming from IHOP.

If you want to learn about how to revolutionize your brand in unique and entertaining way, look no further than IHOP. IHOP successfully flipped their branding name all while keeping their audiences in the loop during the process. All it takes is a fun guessing game and you have thousands of twitter users by storm.

Whether you are for IHOP or IHOB, one thing is for certain– IHOP flipped many heads through their incredible PR tactic that was launched on their social media.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (A.K.A. PUBG) has become one of the most popular games since releasing last March. I played the game while vacationing with family in Atlanta a few months back. It’s a great online battle royale game where you drop from a plane onto an island; from there, you scavenge for weapons that would help eliminate the other players. Each round consists of 100 people onto one island that quickly becomes smaller as more players are eliminated. The goal is to become the last player standing by the end of the match.

Even after dying multiple times, I still enjoyed playing through each round. Its full of action and prompts you to pay attention to where your enemies are. One false move and you could be sniped instantly. Every player is for themselves in this heated battle royale match.

Besides PUBG, another game I check out was Fortnite Battle Royale. Oddly enough, Fortnite Battle Royale seemed a little too similar to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. In fact, Fortnite Battle Royale is known to be too familiar to the point that it is currently being sued.

PUBG Corporation is suing Epic Games (company behind Fortnite) over copyright infringement. The studio asked a court in South Korea whether or not Epic Games copied its intellectual property.

Both PUBG and Fortnite have become wildly popular since they released. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds won multiple awards including Best Multiplayer Game (35th Golden Joystick Awards), Action Game of the Year (D.I.C.E. Awards 2017), and even eSports game of the year (2018 SXSW Gaming Awards). Ever since Epic Games created Fortnite Battle Royale, the game was bought more times than PUBG.

It’s no secret that PUBG and Fortnite have been in competition since last year. The two games are so familiar to the point that PUBG Corporation is looking to sue for copyright infrigement. Two popular battle royale games have become tangled into one PR nightmare. Their audience won’t be turned off by the nightmare, being they have been discussing this inside joke around the internet for quite some time now. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see where the wind blows with this story.

While this PR nightmare may not cause as much damage for the games themselves, it will be intriguing to see what happens for both companies. Who knows, this lawsuit could hurt both parties in the long run. Ironically enough, it is as if PUBG Corporation and Epic Games have placed themselves in their own battle royale match.

Whatever the case may be, only one company will survive this video game PR nightmare. Even with the nightmare happening, PUBG and Fortnite will continue to soar in popularity.

So who will survive this battle royale match – PUBG Corporation or Epic Games? Only one company will make it out of this PR nightmare alive.

The cannabis leaf has become a staple image for brands all across the nation. It has been used in branding for dispensaries, tv series, movies, apparel, internet memes, and even on the packaging for cannabis products as well. Businesses are finding it much easier (and much more useful) to utilize the leaf as part of their branding strategy now that the laws are becoming less strict. Using the cannabis leaf was always an obvious choice, but legality issues created many roadblocks before making that happen.

Here in this 21st century, there is no limits as to what the infamous cannabis leaf can do for businesses. Its continuing to be utilized in more innovative and creative ways every day. As a matter of fact, the cannabis leaf is even being used as a new town logo.

In Kanepi, a small town in Estonia, citizens voted to adopt the cannabis leaf as its new symbol. The results came from a landslide vote within an online poll. Since then, the town council approved the image; it will appear on government stationary, signage, and even on the municipal flag.

Ironically enough, kanepit is the Estonian word for ‘cannabis’. It’s actually no coincidence because the town was named Kanepi because its fields used to produce a lot of hemp for rope, oil, and even canvas. With its long history of growing hemp, it only makes sense that Kanepi adopts the cannabis leaf for their town logo.

What we have here is a unique take on branding strategy. Kanepi is looking to flourish their state brand by incorporating the cannabis leaf as their logo. Cannabis use continues to flourish around the nation and that includes Estonia as well. While cannabis still remains illegal in Estonia, influence from social media persuaded Estonian citizens to adopt cannabis use into their society. They opened the poll to non-residents, which was how they were able to rack up tens of thousands of votes. Good to know that Estonia got a little help from the world of the internet.

If there’s one lesson to take away within this PR miracle, it’s this – cannabis is here to stay on this planet. Not just on the nation of America, but for countries all across the world. It won’t be long before other countries create major changes to adopt cannabis into their social culture. While states in America are already (or will be) enjoying consuming cannabis from recreational shops, countries like Estonia start to see it more within their society.

When you have the cannabis leaf being branded for a town’s flag, the sky’s the limits for the cannabis industry. The industry will only flourish HIGHER from here.